Finding Your People in a World That Keeps Scrolling
We weren’t meant to do this alone
Hi there,
Before I start, here are our Programming Notes:
We now have a new page on our website for The Matriark Salon, with a calendar of events. Our next gathering is June 4th is about PERIMENOPAUSE and MENOPAUSE at Wave Social Wellness Southampton, and tickets are available HERE. We will announce our June 16th guest next week, so stay tuned.
The video from our The Matriark Salon & Pop Up Season Salon with Brad Ford is now available for Paid Subscribers, just head to the Salon’s page and scroll down. We will upload the one with Jessie Freschl soon. It’s very casual an if you haven’t attended, hopefully you’ll be able to get the overall vibe of our events and join us next time!
We had our monthly giveway for our Founding Members, and the lucky winner got the blush acrylic phone chain to carry their cell phones in style. Thank you Criss Cross Company and Andrea Mueffelmann for the lovely gift!
We’ve got the apps. The devices. The group chats. But who are we really connected to?
Back in 2017, long before AI began rewiring our lives, Oprah sat down with war journalist Sebastian Junger to talk about belonging and his book Tribe *. She recently replayed the conversation on her Super Soul podcast, and I couldn’t stop nodding and thinking about on how this conversation is even more relevant today than it was 8 years ago. Junger spoke not just about the breakdown of political unity, but about something deeper: the collapse of human connection.
He talks about how somewhere along the path of “progress,” we traded community for independence. We don’t rely on our neighbors, we don’t speak to people IRL, and we live in single-family homes with individual screens and individual schedules, where even families pass like ships in the night. It’s not just division—it’s fracture. (related to the topic of technology, I wrote about “The Other A.I.” - Artificial Intimacy , take a look HERE, and scroll down all the way for a video of Sebastian at Talks at Google).
What are we really starving for underneath it all is safety, meaning, and a place to be ourselves without performing. That hasn’t changed in thousands of years.
So when we do get a glimpse of real connection, it hits deep. This has been my main motivation to host The Matriark Salon. In our gathering with Brad Ford and Jessie Freschl, we came together to talk entrepreneurship, style, the Earth, our bodies, but what we actually did was meet each other’s humanity. Just people—smart, curious, different—sitting in a room with the shared intention to connect. To see and be seen in a real, authentic way.
Those moments are rare, especially in adulthood. Finding your tribe as a grown-up is hard. It’s messy. It takes vulnerability, trial and error, walking into rooms where you don’t know anyone and hoping you won’t be the only one who doesn’t belong.
And if you’re a person of color or navigating different class codes, it’s even more layered. The courage it takes just to enter the room, not knowing if you’ll be fully seen, heard, or respected, is real and sometimes paralyzing. The emotional calculus is exhausting. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved to entertain at home. There’s something about creating the space myself that feels safer, more intentional, but alas, I bought a small house, so now I host Salons wherever I can :)
But we need to keep showing up because our joy, our health, our very survival depends on it.
So if you’re still searching for your people, keep going. Host your own salons. Invite someone to have coffee. Ask a neighbor for help. Join that workshop. Your tribe is out there, and closer than you think.
Sending love,
Patricia
PS: there is also a video of Sebastian Junger at the Talks at Google and Youtube if you want to watch